Sorry Mansoor, You Must Be A Hero-Figure To Do Rape Jokes

Yesterday, Trisha roasted Mansoor for his filthy statement in a recent interview.

The interview:

What really happened?

In a recent interview, Mansoor complained about his role in the movie Leo where he was not given a chance for proximity with the heroines Trisha and Madonna. He comically expressed his expectation for a rape scene, which he claims to possess mastery over as a prominent villain character artist in the 90s.

What he did was indeed abhorrent. Trisha's outrageous tweet sparked headlines over the net which made us witness netizens criticizing Mansoor heavily. This is good news.

At the same time, I pondered over another interview which was aired a decade back.

The video above has been deleted from Youtube. This is a clip from an interview with the crew of Nanban movie ( 2012 ).

Here, You can find a girl from the audience asking Jiiva on his role preference for movies. Jiiva comes with a jaw-dropping response which was ironically welcomed with applauses and cheers.

His reponse:

'' I want to act as a villain as that would give me the chance to rape many women.. ( laughs.. )''

His response was laughed upon by everyone including Shankar, Vijay, Srikanth and Gopi. Afterall, it was a joke to the கூத்தாடி-s ( Kūttāḍī ) and கூத்தாடி supporters.

Jiiva's response was only highlighted by a few personalities in Twitter which simply went above the heads of public. Playback singer Chinmayi highlighted the issue but no one gave a shit back then which they are giving to Trisha now.

The contemporary Trisha who has taken an oath to never act with Mansoor played a heroine figure to Jiiva in 'Endendrum Punnagai'' which was released a year after 'Nanban'.

We don't Need கூத்தாடி-s To Knock Sense 

We don't need to wait for a Trisha to come up with a statement before we pounce on Mansoor. The problem with us is that we idolize கூத்தாடி-s to a point where we set our values based on their opinions.

The industry is not as authentic as it appears. Our values should not be based on their hologram. 10 years back, Jiiva's statement was seen as a joke only because the worshiped demigods like Vijay laughed along with it. Misogynistic statements were fine as long as our favourite actors acknowledged them. 

I doubt anyone would have batted an eye on the current issue unless Trisha made a Tweet on it.

So Tamizh audience place their values based on the industry's hologram.

This is dangerous.

Everything is fine as Long As It's Prince Charming

Value driven by the industry is very cosmetic. The film industry runs on cosmesis. Jiiva's statement was seen as a joke partly because he is a hero-figure. He has the cosmetic advantage to it. Mansoor does not fall under this spectrum and hence, a similar statement makes him a monstrous figure.

This cheap parallel is widespread.

It is okay for Madhavan to play a role of a stalker in the movie Minnale. He is not a creep here, because hey, he is a chocolate boy!

In this movie, Madhavan plays a role of a stalker who fakes his identity to live a romantic life with a girl he falls for. He resorts to violence when she realises this. He even threatens her fiancé. This movie was celebrated back in the days and Maddy became an icon for romance.

Then we have newer films like Remo which promotes the same thing. But these acts are not condemned for one stupid reason: the actors are celebrated.

Whether it is violence, stalking, misogyny etc, everything is normalized as long as it is advocated by a charming hero.

But when a non-hero material like Mansoor does it, everyone suddenly gets back to their senses.

This is what happens when we act our values based on cinema.

In a nutshell

We have come to a state where even our protests and rage is not based on authenticity. Unless we stop placing our values on cinematic holograms, we will never live in reality. This huge netizen rage on Mansoor is not even authentic. Most people are just jumping on the bandwagon. A value which is purely dependent on a trigger from the cinematic hologram is as cheap as Mansoor's statement.